The Internet and mobile technology have brought convenience to our fingertips: you can book a cab or reserve your railway tickets online or on an app. However, those with visual or hearing impediments are not always able to use these ‘lifehacks’ as easily because they are not designed with accessibility for all in mind.
“Many of these apps are built on software that have inbuilt tools for accessibility, but because the coders have not taken them into consideration, they do not translate to inclusive design,” said Vishal Kumar, manager, HR Analytics at Tata Motors, Mumbai, who is visually impaired. For instance, a text-to-speech application would say “Button” when it crosses a button on an app, but not specify what the button is for, rendering it ineffective.
At a conference on information accessibility organised by the Department for Social Welfare and Justice, National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) and NASSCOM foundation, here on Friday, industry leaders brainstormed on how to make web and mobile applications more inclusive. “If implemented at the design stage, there won’t be much extra cost incurred by the company designing the software,” says Javed Abidi, director, NCPEDP, a non-profit trust. He added that to make software inclusive, it was necessary to involve persons with disabilities right from the testing stage.
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Mr. Kumar pointed out that e-commerce sites based out of India are not designed keeping the needs of the visually impaired in mind.
When people talk about making technology accessible for persons with disabilities, they sometimes miss out one glaring fact: a lot of technology we take for granted today was built with them in mind. Take predictive text on mobile phones, which was designed initially for persons with cognitive disability who find it difficult to type on the small keypads.
“We need to stop thinking of it as building for ‘them’, and instead as building tools for all of us,” said Shilpi Kapoor of BreakBarriers, an accessibility and assistive technology firm in India.
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Other such examples designed for accessibility that now have wide usage are zoom, text-to-speech conversion, and easy-to-read font types.
For many companies, improving access is limited to altering building design: it stops at building a ramp and a toilet.
Javed Abidi,
Director, National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People